I recently acquired a GPU, a graphics processing unit. It's called a GPU because such processors were originally intended to speed up graphics. But MATLAB uses it to speed up computation. Let's see how the gpuArray object benchmarks on my machine. I have been doing computer benchmarks for years. I like to do profiles where I vary the size of a task and see how the amount of memory required affects performance. I always learn something unexpected when I do these profiles. Ben Todoroff is on the MathWorks Parallel Processing team. Last year he contributed #34080, gpuBench to the MATLAB Central File Exchange. He has been able to compare several different GPUs. I am going to consider the performance of only one GPU, but in more detail. Important note. This is only about double precision. Single precision is another story. ... read more >>

This is a short post to point to a web site in the Netherlands, VAXBARN. The site proprietor, Camiel Vanderhoeven, is assembling a collection of historically interesting computers.... read more >>

MathWorks is creating a deck of playing cards that will be offered as gifts at our trade show booths. The design of the cards is based on Penrose Tilings and plots of the Finite Fourier Transform Matrix.... read more >>

I am addicted. I keep coming back to John Conway's Game of Life. Years ago, I wrote a chapter about Life in Experiments with MATLAB. I wrote a three-part series about Life shortly after I started blogging. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3. I have recently made significant enhancements to my MATLAB program for Life. I never seem to finish the code because I get diverted by actually using the program to explore the Universe. I invite you to join me. But, fair warning, you might become addicted too.... read more >>

Find the optimum traveling salesman tour through the capitals of the 48 contiguous states in the USA.... read more >>

Create a MATLAB® graph object from information about neighbors among the 48 contiguous states in the USA.... read more >>

I probably first saw this matrix in 1960 in John Todd's class at Caltech. But I forgot about it until Tahar Loulou jogged my memory with a comment following my blog post in late May. It deserves a place in our gallery of interesting matrices.... read more >>

David Wilson, from the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand, has alerted me to this remarkable coincidence. Here is the "Burning Ship" from my post about fractals four weeks ago.... read more >>

Camille Jordan (1838-1922)... read more >>

The ACM Special Interest Group on Programming Languages, SIGPLAN, expects to hold the fourth in a series of conferences on the History of Programming Languages in 2020, see HOPL-IV. The first drafts of papers are to be submitted by August 2018. That long lead time gives me the opportunity to write a detailed history of MATLAB. I plan to write the paper in sections, which I'll post in this blog as they are available. This is the seventh, and final, installment.... read more >>